John and Mr Ramshaw

I spent a couple of hours in Burnley Central Library today, exploring the photo archives and chatting with library users and staff. In amongst the filing cabinets of thousands of photos of Burnley I had been attracted by this photograph of a man with an eagle and a group of excited young children on the steps of the library in 1949. It had been fascinating to see how many lectures and activities there had been in the library over the years since the library was built in the early 30s.

I was chatting with library staff Robin and John later, asking about permission to use photos for the project, and John told me about a photo he had found of a man with an eagle on the library steps and how he had researched the story and created a display for the library a couple of years earlier......of course it was the same photo of Captain Knight and Mr Ramshaw (his eagle). I went right back to the photo and John told me the tale of the famous pair, their movie careers and about Mr Ramshaw being lost twice and re-found, once after being left for dead on a torpedoed ship during the Second World War. If you want to know more about the pair, here's a link to an article and photographs.

I think Mr Ramshaw may be the subject of my first workshop and installation next week although how that will happen, I'm not yet sure!